My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[el murdoque]

@arepa_funk do you by any chance remember what the clean knob does exactly?
I find the description in the manual a bit misleading.

By my understanding (gained from turning the knobs and listening):

Volume is Volume, that's easy.

Overdrive does determine the amount of overdrive in the signal. Not to be confused with gain - because the volume does not change when you turn the knob and there is still signal passing through at zero. It feels a bit like a dry/wet blend.

Tone feels like a passive tone control and is also described as such.

Curve seems to regulate the top end of the sizzle. CCW for brighter, CW for darker.

Now it gets confusing:
There is a knob on the inside that is called Drive Mix. It's supposed to control the mix of Overdrive and Clean signal, so in essence it does the same as the Overdrive knob ?

Then there is that knob on the outside called Clean. This is supposed to blend in clean sound, so it controls the mix of Overdrive and Clean signal - again ?

Then there is the presence that does tweak the high end of the overdrive (this might be either gain or another tone control, depending on what high end means)

and last but not least the knob named Filter that adjusts the clean tonal spectrum.


The way I gather it, there might be three voices here.
1. The unaffected clean signal.
2. The 'Clean British Preamp' signal
3. The Overdrive signal

My current settings are:
Volume rather low, to match unity.
Overdrive around noon.
Clean - wherever - I can't make out a difference
Tone fully CW
Curve fully CCW
Presence and Drive mix at factory preset
Filter about middle of the way (can't call it noon because these are oriented differently)

 

[el murdoque]

...And some Pink arrived to contest the purple.

 

[el murdoque]

This is getting increasingly difficult.
At some point, I'll have to sell some (ideally most) of those pedals and I keep finding reasons to hold on to them.

 

[arepa_funk]

the green rhino is basically a modded tubescreamer (with the 100hz and curve controls), whereas the Pork Loin's clean side is nearly the exact same circuit of the front end of a Neve 1073 module.

@el murdoque -- this quote above is from the "Pork Loins Mod" thread. Clean doesn't mean dry signal. It's a voiced clean signal based on a Neve module.

My understanding is that there isn't an unaffected clean signal. Only the Neve voiced and the overdrive.

Yes, tone is passive like on a passive bass. I kept it fully CW.

 

[el murdoque]

So if I understand this correctly, you get a 'clean sound' based on a vintage console plus an overdrive sound,
and then you have six knobs, half of which do clean/dirty blend while the other half are passive filter knobs at different points in the circuit and then there's a master volume.

 

[arepa_funk]

So if I understand this correctly, you get a 'clean sound' based on a vintage console plus an overdrive sound,
and then you have six knobs, half of which do clean/dirty blend while the other half are passive filter knobs at different points in the circuit and then there's a master volume.

Yes, that's my understanding too. Though I'm not sure if the internal Presence knob is a filter or frequency control.

Curve and Tone worked closely, to my recollection. Both were frequently fully CW.

 

[el murdoque]

I thought curve was the other way around. I'll play with the knobs later tonight when I A/B the Pork Loin against the Locomotive.

 

[RJ]

There’s a ver in-depth video of someone dialing in a PL. I’ve never owned one but watched it anyway because it was level 10 nerdery and the controls have always seemed so confusing. I’ll see if I can’t find it. Definitely worth googling.

 

[el murdoque]

All the ones I found were not really in depth. More like someone repeating exactly what the manual says.

 

[el murdoque]

Okay, so now it gets complicated.

I put the Pork Loin and Locomotive side by side to be able to compare them.
With their volumes set to unity and lower gain settings they both are very transparent.
I feel that the Locomotive adds a little on the highs with the tone knob past noon, but I might be imagining things because the Pork Loin is a little darker than the clean signal.
Apart from that little detail, they feel very similar.
When I increase the gain, they both offer a wide area of touch sensitive reaction to playing style - it is very easy to set them at the preferred level. The range is quite big. It starts with clean tones and ends with full on overdrive. Finally, some differences stick out:
The Locomotive starts audible overdrive on the higher notes first and only adds dirt to the lower notes at higher settings while the Pork Loin spreads the dirt more evenly across the fretboard. The Locomotive can sound brighter while doing that.
With heavier grind, I prefer the tube breakup sounds. The Pork Loin with all the knobs set to maximum overdrive looses its organic qualities and sounds ... well .. back in the day when I was 14, an older guitar player showed me the difference between a SS amp and a tube one. It was an ear-opening experience. And the Pork Loin at maxed settings sounds like the SS amp.

So it's an easy decision one might think. I like the Locomotive better because the tube breakup sounds better at full gain. Yes, but when do I play at these settings? I'm happy with a bit of warm breakup and a little grind and set the pedals gain at way less than maximum. And right now, I like the Pork Loin better in that regard.

The unfair bit was that I already spent a couple of sessions getting to know the feeling of ol' Porky and then the Locomotive had to drop in and go A/B straight from the first second.

I will spend some playing time without comparing pedals, just getting to know the Locomotive.

 

[el murdoque]

I spent a while with the Locomotive only so we could get to know each other a little bit more.

This pedal features 4 knobs:
Tone is a passive tone blend. Fully CW it does nothing.
Gain is gain.
Mean is the output of the wet signal
Clean is the output of the dry signal.
Those two do affect each other in some way I have not fully figured out yet.

However, with the Tone fully CW, the clean blend off and the gain around noon, I get a signal that is on the brighter side of things. The baked in tone steals a little bit of the bass frequencies and adds a little around the top. This is totally okay with me. I can counteract both by turning back the tone knob and by blending in clean signal. I found that I liked the brighter tone, so I looked for the point where bypassed signal and wet signal had an even amount of treble and then set it a bit higher than that. It's not harsh, but higher notes get a pearly texture now. With the bass loss I did the same - I plucked a low note and set the clean blend until I could not perceive any loss of lows when switching the pedal on and off. After that, I set the mean knob so I get unity and then there's only the gain knob left to dial in.

One thing that the Locomotive can do, is being set essentially clean with just a hint of harmonic breakup wich is barely there in the low notes because the unaffected root frequencies are too strong to make them audible.
When you play chords higher up the neck it's beautiful. Turn the reverb up and you're sitting there for an hour, plucking chords and letting them fade.
My Preamp does that, too - but I favor just a hint of that in my clean signal.
With the gain a little higher, you loose a bit of dynamic range up there while chording, but you get more saturation and tube compression in exchange. The single notes are still audible and it's not mushy at all.
Now there is some grit in the lower notes, but it does not yet feel like an overdrive effect. It's more like an amp that is pushed outside the comfort zone but has not arrived at breakup level.
That happens if you increase the gain a touch more. Speaking of touch. The dynamic range is insane.
With a touch more of the gain knob, we're where I want to go. I can still make chords sing, but now I have to watch out because if I pluck too hard, the notes bloom up with solid overdrive.
The lower registers are clean when I watch out, sound just a bit gravelly when I play normally and the bass gets downright angry as soon as I dig in.
All the while, I can clearly hear the sound, character and timbre of my bass. The lack of tone shaping controls plus the fact that the baked in sound really only favors a bit of the high spectrum while it chews off a bit of the low spectrum means that the options are somewhat limited - what you get is your bass sound plus tube magic.
I can really see how people could use this pedal as exactly that: A pedal for adding tube magic. It's a great tube magic sprinkler for people who like understatement, though. I mean the enclosure does not have any openings that manage airflow on the one hand, but also show off the tube on the other hand. And it just says Locomotive. They don't mention the tube.
Given the MSRP of €250, and the fact that it will run off standard 9V power supplies (provided they do have the juice, the draw is IIRC 300mA), this is a great opportunity to get some REAL tube magic into your signal chain without breaking the bank. This is one of those pedals that run the tube at proper voltage levels, so it actually does something other than looking pretty.

When I wrote my last post, I felt like if I had to make a decision on the spot, I'd go with the Pork Loin.
Now that I've spent proper time with the Locomotive, I introduced the Pork Loin back into my signal chain.
When I tried the chord plucking thing, it sounded dull in comparison.
When I tried the normal playing thing, the overdrive sounded artificial to my earballs.
Right now, my bias is exactly mirrored. I LIKE both pedals, but if I was to make a choice now, I'd pick the Locomotive.
I'm curious what longer term testing will reveal.

I'm also curious what the Beta DLX will reveal. The problem is that the sellers choice of carrier for the parcel was a poor one. Tracking claims it's out for delivery today, which is a day early, but with these guys it's always a matter of luck. I keep my fingers crossed that they find my address. It's only a shop, with flags outside, the only thing that's open and has lights on on the whole plaza, with the address written in really tall letters over the door. It's impossible to miss. But in software, people say "When you make something idiot proof, the world will build a better idiot". The same Principle applies here. When I make myself impossible to miss because there are flags and lights and big letters, they might just hire the first blind post-person to do my route.

 

[el murdoque]

I'm also curious what the Beta DLX will reveal. The problem is that the sellers choice of carrier for the parcel was a poor one. Tracking claims it's out for delivery today, which is a day early, but with these guys it's always a matter of luck.

Seems like they switched to nocturnal creatures, possibly vampires. I waited in the shop until half past five, then went home. I checked the tracking later and an attempt of delivery was made at half past seven.

Sometimes it's hard to keep a cool temper about these things. I know very well that the poor people that do these rounds have it bad. They are overworked and underpaid. No one wants these jobs so the companies hire whomever they can get. I think the requirements are fulfilled when you can drive a car and can read and write.

 

[el murdoque]

Solid Gold Sparkle! Yay.

 

[el murdoque]

Last night, it dawned on me.
Looking forward, it's dark -- but looking back I can see the tunnel walls.

Chasing an overdrive is a journey down the Rabbit Hole.

I plugged in the Beta DLX and it immediately gave me a pleasant sound. Then I started flipping switches and toying around with the boost. That guy in the SolidGoldFX video did a few sweet sounds:

So I copied the settings and tried them for myself. It totally worked out. This pedal does some magic to flatwound strings. It took me not long to decide that if, at this moment I should decide it's not the pedal I'm looking for, it still is a keeper because it does some rather special things and that I would like to add it to the ever growing arsenal. Immediately after that thought had passed my head I realized that if I keep acquiring dirt pedals at this pace, I'll run out of shelf space quickly when I decide to keep every other specimen.
I will have to go through those pedals again and make some tough decisions.
Up until this moment, my pedal acquisition was guided by good judgement and luck. Apart from that Plasma pedal that sounded terrible, every overdrive that came into my possession turned out to be a pedal I could live with after I learned how it wants to be set and played into. I can coax a sound worth listening to from all these pedals, but some are closer to what I picture in my head.
I'm not sure if the pedal exists that really ends the search, because there are so many that do essentially the same, but are voiced slightly different and 'the perfect one' is also a matter of the mix I want to use it in.


Beyond pedal related philosophy, I also did some research in regard to what it is that I really want here, after more than a dozen pedals I feel like I'm getting some reliable data.

Here's my layman's explanation:
My situation is that I'm looking for a dirt pedal that works with flatwounds.
On my bass, I favor the neck pickup and on my preamp I have the bass maxed, my plucking hand never ventures on the bridge side of the neck pickup. My sound offers plenty of lows and there is zero twang. The ringing sound of fresh rounds is completely absent. My preference of a sound that is on the darker side, a warm and fat one, made me go for pedals that have a reputation of a darker sound. That was not entirely the best way to go forward. A darker sounding dirt pedal can take the edge off fresh rounds while adding a more flurry edge of overdrive sound that will mingle with the strings own higher frequency sounds.
However, my sound's edge is blunt already.
That means all the high frequencies that are present post dirt pedal come from the dirt pedals' means of breaking up and overdriving the input signal. There is nothing to mingle with. That means the sizzle on top has to sound organic, like it belongs, because it really sticks out. That also means that a pedal can be on the brighter sounding side of things, as long as it does not cut bass frequencies, it's fine.
In the regard of organic sizzle, three pedals really stood out above the rest - and those share the way they get their clipping done. You might have guessed it: They are tube driven. The Undergrond Accelerator (which cannot take the dirt spot as it is my preamp), the O-Bass and the Locomotive are the pedals that are best at adding higher frequency harmonic overtone sizzle content, because it feels and sounds right and natural, where really all of the solid state pedals did at some point cross the line and sound artificial.

 

[el murdoque]

That SolidGoldFX pedal is quite something.
I was offered to buy that pedal at what I considered a very fair price and must admit that I had not thought about it before. I just listened to youtube for a minute, decided that this might be fun and went for it.
When I looked into it, I found that the deluxe version is no longer in production. There was a beta, and there is a beta mk II (which is still available), so I'm guessing the dlx came between those two - also, a search revealed that there seem to be two different colored versions. I know nothing about when mine was built, but the serial is #77.

The controls seem pretty straightforward at first glance. You get basically two units in one enclosure. The Overdrive section has your standard volume/tone/gain, plus toggle switches. The first is for clipping diodes that let you choose between silicone, silicone/germanium and none. The next two will give you boost/cut/flat for mids and bass. My unit behaves a bit odd when it comes to the bass switch, which is named 'body' - my ears tell me the boost and cut are reversed. I seem to get more bass in the cut position.
The Boost section has a volume pot and two toggles, once again a bass boost/cut/flat one and one that lets you choose the position of the boost pre/post overdrive. The boost section can operate independently from the overdrive. The advantage of that is that you can use it as a standalone boost, the disadvantage is that you cannot set a sound that involves both the boost and overdrive and activate it with a single foot switch.

My usual approach is to find the sweet spot for every option and then roll with it, but the Beta DLX makes that kind of hard. With the gain at zero, there is still signal passing through, and the sound is somewhat altered, in a good way. You can find more than a few good tones without involving the gain, just by twisting the tone knob and by playing around with the toggle switches. With the diodes in the 'none' position and the gain at zero, there is no audible overdrive happening, but when you select one of the other options, you can already hear some harmonic distortions in the overtones. There are a few settings that let me think about where I could use the sound I'm getting because it felt good playing with the pedal in my chain.
With the boost set pre overdrive, the second foot switch can give you more gain on that same sound, driving the notes into more saturation. This is very smooth, though. That's not an angry bellowing you get, but a musical singing overdriven sound that can be used in musical contexts that do not benefit from an aggressive bass sound.
You can set the gain pretty much everywhere you want and then use the other controls to make it sound good.
You can actually do that with any knob or switch on there (apart from the volume, of course).
I've spent two nights playing this pedal for extended periods of time and right now, I'm thinking of mounting it on a mic arm so I can have it in easy reach while I play through it. It feels like I already unearthed a score of usable sounds but still have only scratched the surface. Touch sensitivity? Check. You get heaps of that if you want to. Versatility? It's downright overwhelming.

 

[sunbeast]

That SolidGoldFX pedal is quite something.
I was offered to buy that pedal at what I considered a very fair price and must admit that I had not thought about it before. I just listened to youtube for a minute, decided that this might be fun and went for it.
When I looked into it, I found that the deluxe version is no longer in production. There was a beta, and there is a beta mk II (which is still available), so I'm guessing the dlx came between those two - also, a search revealed that there seem to be two different colored versions. I know nothing about when mine was built, but the serial is #77.

The controls seem pretty straightforward at first glance. You get basically two units in one enclosure. The Overdrive section has your standard volume/tone/gain, plus toggle switches. The first is for clipping diodes that let you choose between silicone, silicone/germanium and none. The next two will give you boost/cut/flat for mids and bass. My unit behaves a bit odd when it comes to the bass switch, which is named 'body' - my ears tell me the boost and cut are reversed. I seem to get more bass in the cut position.
The Boost section has a volume pot and two toggles, once again a bass boost/cut/flat one and one that lets you choose the position of the boost pre/post overdrive. The boost section can operate independently from the overdrive. The advantage of that is that you can use it as a standalone boost, the disadvantage is that you cannot set a sound that involves both the boost and overdrive and activate it with a single foot switch.

My usual approach is to find the sweet spot for every option and then roll with it, but the Beta DLX makes that kind of hard. With the gain at zero, there is still signal passing through, and the sound is somewhat altered, in a good way. You can find more than a few good tones without involving the gain, just by twisting the tone knob and by playing around with the toggle switches. With the diodes in the 'none' position and the gain at zero, there is no audible overdrive happening, but when you select one of the other options, you can already hear some harmonic distortions in the overtones. There are a few settings that let me think about where I could use the sound I'm getting because it felt good playing with the pedal in my chain.
With the boost set pre overdrive, the second foot switch can give you more gain on that same sound, driving the notes into more saturation. This is very smooth, though. That's not an angry bellowing you get, but a musical singing overdriven sound that can be used in musical contexts that do not benefit from an aggressive bass sound.
You can set the gain pretty much everywhere you want and then use the other controls to make it sound good.
You can actually do that with any knob or switch on there (apart from the volume, of course).
I've spent two nights playing this pedal for extended periods of time and right now, I'm thinking of mounting it on a mic arm so I can have it in easy reach while I play through it. It feels like I already unearthed a score of usable sounds but still have only scratched the surface. Touch sensitivity? Check. You get heaps of that if you want to. Versatility? It's downright overwhelming.

Makes me want to track down one of those! I really did like the original Beta I had, but found its range of tones too limited for what I needed at the time.

 

[el murdoque]

Makes me want to track down one of those! I really did like the original Beta I had, but found its range of tones too limited for what I needed at the time.

I already had someone offer to take it off my hands should I not like it and while I was looking around for info on the pedal I got the impression that they are pretty rare.

I'm not entirely sure if this one will be able to fill the spot of 'the dirt pedal' on my pedalboard, but I somehow want to make space and take it places and see where we can get . . .

 

[StayLow]

Blueberry variants are a good place to look if you want a dark/warm overdrive. Barbershop will get you there as well, and I would also try one of the SolidGoldFX bass overdrives (Superdrive, Beta, Beta MKII).

Epic thread! Love Barbershop and a few Blueberries and variants I have. Also have several/all of the SolidGold Beta pedals (except the DLX) and never vibed with them. For me, even at lower settings the drive is too present, too harsh and/or too dark.

OP states a desire for touch sensitive AND balanced, but IME these are opposites w/o compression in front or few dynamics in your playing (essentially same thing as compression).

I’ll suggest BJFE BlackBerry which is the least dark of these variants since by design it passes treble through which for some is a highly desirable feature esp. if using flats. Otherwise maybe the One Control BlackBerry, also designed by Bjorn.

BJFE Silver Bee well worth a try (think “Ampeg”), maybe the more economical BearFoot version (unsure if identical) or BJFE “5K” iteration with the “dynamic control”.

 

[el murdoque]

Epic thread! Love Barbershop and a few Blueberries and variants I have. Also have several/all of the SolidGold Beta pedals (except the DLX) and never vibed with them. For me, even at lower settings the drive is too present, too harsh and/or too dark.

OP states a desire for touch sensitive AND balanced, but IME these are opposites w/o compression in front or few dynamics in your playing (essentially same thing as compression).

I’ll suggest BJFE BlackBerry which is the least dark of these variants since by design it passes treble through which for some is a highly desirable feature esp. if using flats. Otherwise maybe the One Control BlackBerry, also designed by Bjorn.

BJFE Silver Bee well worth a try (think “Ampeg”), maybe the more economical BearFoot version (unsure if identical) or BJFE “5K” iteration with the “dynamic control”.

Noted and added to my shopping list.

I do like a certain touch sensitivity in a drive pedal. When I started out, I thought that I like it more when the dirt is spread more evenly, even at the cost of dynamic range.
Later on I learned that I prefer touch sensitivity as long as I can control it.
There are pedals where at certain settings, you will have your low end clear as a bell even when you hit it with a hammer but the high notes will bloom with breakup even if you play them softly. That's too much.

 

[Killing Floor]

@el murdoque if you place your amp in the corner of a room and make a triangle you can use the space behind to stack up all your dirt pedals. Ask me how I know it works.